A Busy World Filled With Links

Still looking into Hibernate, expanding a bit into Middlegen. I got a bit distracted by all of the pieces it takes to get it working, and I'm trying to figure out if I can put it all into the system in a clean enough fashion that everyone else will understand what I'm doing. Or, for that matter, so that I understand what I'm doing.

There's a sort of Red Hat for Java apps, now, called "Out-of-the-Box". The Windows version weighs in at 141MB (for the free Community edition). Linux at 158MB, but no Mac OS X or Solaris installer. I prefer to start with a base system and then work my way up if possible, so I can at least pretend to understand what all of the components do. But, if you're looking to get started with the dev side of something, this might be interesting.

Speaking of which, Schroedinger is an interesting, easy-to-deploy Tomcat with a nice GUI and some extra whizzy features. Especially intrigued by inclusion of ZeroConf (aka Rendezvous) technology. I've been pleased to see so much support for ZeroConf showing up lately - maybe it has something to do with a Java library that's been popping up.

Really intrigued by OpenOffice lately. I keep mentioning it to people, "free version of Office!" "Better integration with Java!" I get the distinct impression that most people aren't willing to consider switching their word processor, much less their operating system. Hmm. I've also heard a few people say things like, "I'd consider Linux if it had MS Office." Which, of course, explains why people might be willing to try Mac OS instead. Unfortunately, the Mac OS X version of OpenOffice is a bit rough. Sigh. Still, it's easier to get people to install a desktop application than a desktop OS...

Somebody was asking me about Java on Palm OS devices. Looks like things are a bit confusing. Found Waba & SuperWaba, and also some other references to what looks like J2ME, but not at all clear how to get any of these apps to be set up as a user-friendly installer. The core question - can you write an application in Java that "looks" like a regular application to a Palm user?

And, as a final note, I wasn't getting emails when people were posting before - that should be fixed now...